Language and the Declaration o Arbroath

The Declaration was drafted by Abbott Bernard of Arbroath, Bruce’s chancellor and head of the secretariat, almost certainly under the watchful eyes of the King. Although we’re not sure how fluently Bruce could speak Latin, it’s likely that he had at least a working knowledge.

One of the great hypotheticals of Scottish history is: in what language would Bruce have roused his troops before Bannockburn?

For what it’s worth, The Brus, the magnificent poetic narrative in early Scots from the later 1300s, has King Robert addressing his nobles, and not the whole army. While this might have taken place in Norman French, it’s just as likely that the highly naturalised Bruce would, in fact, have spoken in early Scots, the language of his Annandale lands.

In 1314, when the battle took place, the Northumbrian dialect of Anglo-Saxon spoken in Lothian was spreading out across the country, and was well on its way – linguistically and politically – to becoming Scots, and a national language of Scotland. For example, just over a century later, in 1424, Scots replaces Latin as the official language recording the statutes of the Scottish Parliament, and that notable shift in its written and official status must represent shifting patterns in when, and by whom, it was spoken over preceding generations.

As well as early Scots, some Latin, Middle English and Norman French, it’s highly likely that Bruce would also have spoken Gaelic, the language of his mother and of his Carrick heartlands.
Reflections on the Modern Scots Translation
It has come to be suggested that the American Declaration of Independence was shaped after the example of the Declaration of Arbroath, and, though the evidence for any such connection between the two documents is questionable – to say the least – they have often been linked in the public imagination.

As with its American counterpart, the intentions behind the Declaration of Arbroath and its ongoing status as a ‘living document’ are consistently subject to debate. Certainly, although it is highly doubtable that its original signatories ever meant for it to be interpreted it as such, the Declaration of Arbroath has long been celebrated as a pioneering statement of popular sovereignty, centuries ahead of its time, and it is for this reason that the document retains its power to this very day. After all, putting the pragmatism of historical context to one side, who can honestly claim not to be moved by the Declaration’s best-known and most powerful lines about freedom?

It is in English translation (most likely that by Sir James Fergusson) – as opposed to the original Latin – that the Declaration is most widely known today. To the translators, however, it seemed a strange thing that so meaningful a historic document as the Declaration should not be well known in all the modern languages of its nation – especially Scots, whose early form was likely the most important lay language of Scotland in the 1300s, and was certainly better known to Bruce and his men than was Latin or, indeed, English. For many of them, Scots would have been their mother tongue, and – to indulge in another historical hypothetical – if a time-travelling Bruce was somehow to turn up in Arbroath in 2020, we can be sure that he’d find it far easier to read our Scots version than either Fergusson’s English or the Latin original.

To that end, in this translation, in this 700th anniversary year of the Declaration, we have endeavoured to produce a modern and accessible Scots version, with a nonetheless historical feel, that both avoids slavish adherence to its established English equivalent and brings clarity to some of the trickier opacities of the Latin original.